Pharmaceutical care services that are provided in pharmacy community settings involve many actors, including the pharmacist, technicians and clerk.
The pharmacist is involved typically in the verification of the drug distribution process, the analysis of patient medication profiles of the patients, including identifying potential drug or condition interactions checking for drug compatibility and contraindication. Also, the pharmacist is called to give counseling to patient about their medication and advices on general health topics to the patients.
The technician typically receives phone orders, welcome patients arriving at the laboratory, computes the prescriptions and other patient-related information in the pharmacy software (preparation of the prescription labels, receipts, etc.), works at the cash register, manages drug supplies, makes conditioning of medication, etc.
The clerk typically works at the cash, but may also help the technician.
The pharmaceutical care and services are carried out following the assignment of specific tasks to each actor in the laboratory which acts and interacts within a logical and sequential activity workflow.
With reference to FIG. 1, a typical pharmacy laboratory can be seen as a production line, including a plurality of areas, which allows the pharmaceutical care delivery process (from left to right in FIG. 1).
A Typical Laboratory Includes:                a reception, wherein a technician defines the pharmaceutical care or service to the patient/client. In addition to requests from on-site clients, pharmaceutical care requests are received over the phone. This includes the determination of prescription path and handling priority. Possibilities of path include mail or courier delivery and immediate or later pick-up by the client. A container, usually in the form of a tray is then selected by the technician, wherein the color of the tray often allows indicating the priority/path of the pharmaceutical care;        a production terminal, in the form of a computer usually connected to a remote server, allows the technician to create an indentifying label and invoice and insurance receipts. During this step, a series of pharmaceutical care characteristics are defined with regards to the drugs and/or professional acts to be performed by the pharmacist. For example, indications regarding any specific request by the client or insurer, for example, are written on a Post-It™ or directly onto the label;        a conditioning area, wherein the prescription labels are inserted in empty vial and the medications are counted or measured. At this step, further information can be provided, for example on a Post-It™ or else. Examples of such further information include prescription storing instructions, any invoicing specification, etc. Different identification means are currently used by pharmaceutical professionals and technicians as reminders for a future step or for another actor. Such other identification means are for example colored clips;        a verification terminal, wherein the pharmacist verifies the content of the tray, including the prescription vial or another medication container and its label. In this step, the pharmacist also considers any other document included in the basket. The pharmacist also proceeds with a pharmaceutical analyze of the client file before providing any counseling at . . .        . . . the consultation area;        a cash for invoicing the client; and        a confidential counseling/consultation area, wherein more elaborate, delicate and/or complex care or advices are provided by the pharmacist.        
As can be seen from the above, the community pharmaceutical practice results in concrete and abstract matter, including the actual prescription medication, expert advices, pharmaceutical case analyses, etc.
Following the above, one can see that numerous ordered information and pharmaceutical care characteristics are provided from one actor to the other and to the client and from one area to the next within the laboratory.
In a typical pharmacy laboratory, wherein a simple basket or container is used to receive and convey all the above mentioned information and characteristic of the pharmaceutical care, one can see how such basic container shows many limitations and often leads i) to a waste of time in searching for the information, ii) misunderstandings and confusion in actor dealing with the information, iii) lost of some information and iv) difficulty in defining and quantifying of requests, etc.